Mobile applications are a hot topic right now, and that became apparent at the STC Technical Communication Summit in May of 2012. While technical writers are generally the ones behind the scenes, it’s become apparent that in order to use apps on your phone, you need to have some helpful documentation.

Technical writers step in to write the helpful documents that allow users to:

Technical writing is a form of user assistance, a way in which information is given to users in order to assist them during a project. While this phrase is most often used in defining software instruction, that doesn’t mean that assisting a user isn’t important in other forms of writing, e.g. medical writing and forms of techncial writing that go beyond software documentation.

“A general term for guided assistance to a user of a software product. The phrase incorporates all forms of help available to a user. Assistance can also automatically perform procedures or step users through the procedure, depending on the question that the user asked. The term is broader than online help, and includes procedural and tutorial information.”